A Story of Contradictions: A Man of God Movie Review

Disclaimer: Before you read on, this review is entirely my personal opinion of the movie. You’re very allowed to disagree with my opinion of this movie.

If there is one thing I would give to the scriptwriter of this film, it is the person’s ability to keep you on your toes and evoke intense emotions through well-crafted scenes. This film is one that actually reveals the current state of things with such excellent storytelling, and for that, I give the writer a big thumbs up. But what happens when something as delicate as religion and eternal life is told by someone who might know next to nothing about it? Every movie has an intended message it wants to pass across, so what happens when the message from a movie directly opposes the truth? Well, let’s dive into this review.

The making of the film:

Title: The Man of God
Release date: 16th April 2022
Main actors: Akah Nnani, Osas Ighodaro, Prince Nelson Enwerem.
Director: Bolanle Austen-Peters
Film company: BAP productions
Location: Lagos, Nigeria.

Plot summary:

The movie begins with a church meeting featuring Samuel Obalolu’s father (Jude Chukwuma) leading prayers, and then Samuel goes out to play which he is disciplined for. The discipline continues until he vows never to come back home. The story then advances to some years later when he becomes a student and is the leader of a band that performs Fela musicals. Teju (Osas Igbhodaro), his friend, invites him to a fellowship which he eventually attends after meeting Joy, Teju’s other friend. He goes to the fellowship because of joy who he takes a liking to but continues with Rekya who was his friend with benefits and his band manager. He and Joy become friends and eventually start dating. Later a minister at Joy’s fellowship accosts her for dating a boy who was obviously not serious with God yet was the child of a pastor, and they break up. Rekya invites him to live with her and to drop out of school, but he refuses. Eventually, he and Joy reconcile, but they break up again after she leaves school and marries Zack, who was then a pastor. Teju picks him up from his bad place, and they end up getting married.

The story continues to years later, where Samuel works as a choir director and is bullied by the wife of the Bishop because of the kind of songs he performs. He is then accused of sleeping with church girls which he denies but Teju eventually finds out about it. Rekya comes back from overseas and advises him to start a church because it was big business. He uses the proceeds from the church to do human trafficking business with Rekya for which he is caught. Meanwhile, his brother Daniel comes to see him informing him that his mother is dead. He tries to leave Teju and go abroad, and so she reports him to the police and he is arrested. After serving time in prison, he returns back to his father. The movie ends with an inscription ‘Let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

My review of this movie.

The first thing I noticed about the movie was the title. When I watched the movie, it was almost like the writer was making a mockery of the title “man of God” because there was nothing about Samuel that pointed to him being a man of God. The story’s progression was great; I liked how the writer put the scenes together to fit the picture he was trying to portray. The writer did very well with the screenplay given how long the movie ran. Also, it was very impressive to me that a faith-based movie was distributed by Netflix and was even among the top ten movies in Nigeria for more than a week.

The movie had a very thought-provoking storyline, but it derailed from the truth by a lot.

Now, to me, this movie is not a Christian movie. It might portray the faith through the lens of some people, but in no way does it emphasize the values or the tenets of the Christian faith. The first scenes were about how his Father used to discipline him because he wasn’t interested in church activities; that was entirely the father’s choice of discipline and had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Christian. The fact that it seems like Christian parents might tend towards extreme discipline to ‘beat the demon out of a child’ doesn’t make it biblical or even correct. There is absolutely no excuse for a parent beating a child to the point that the child doesn’t want to come back home.

Then there is Samuel, who had been confused from the get-go and let the choices of his father dictate his future. It was never shown that the goodness of God drives a man to repentance or that a man is saved by grace and not because of his works. Samuel wanted to join the Church because of Joy and she accepted it, showing that even she did not understand that Christianity is a relationship with Jesus and not a church affair. And then everyone made terrible choices till the very end, which is completely acceptable but should not be seen as the norm. Christian or not, man will always have a choice as to whether to do life God’s way or not. All the scenes related to the Christian faith were incorrect, period.

The other scene that got me thinking was that of the Bishop’s wife, which was funny but emphasized that the view a lot of people have about the Christian faith is entirely wrong. And because God doesn’t punish people, these acts go on unchecked until people have the view that the church is a business centre, whereas it absolutely isn’t.

While I don’t blame the writer of this movie, this movie is a direct effrontery to all that the Christian faith stands for, and therefore should not be regarded as a Christian movie. It is great as a cultural and hilarious movie, but for a faith that claims to have the way to eternity, this is a very bad misinterpretation of all that the faith stands for or even the story of the prodigal son which the movie claims to be a twist to.

At the end of the movie, the inscription implied that those who call on the name of the Lord should depart from iniquity, and this apparently meant that Samuel needed to depart from iniquity and that the father was right and the boy was wrong. While that verse is correct, it is not applicable in the context of this movie because Samuel never really called on the name of the Lord. In fact, he didn’t know the lord of his father at all. Therefore he did come back home to his father after going his own way, but that did not mean that his father’s way was the way of the Lord or that he knew the way of the Lord at all.

Finally.

This movie hits close to home for me in so many ways. The acting was great, and the parts were played well by the actors though some parts were a bit bland and unclear. The scriptwriter did an excellent job of telling this story, and the story is filled with moral lessons while depicting the lives of many people in society. But for someone who is a Christian and knows the truth, I definitely don’t recommend it as a Christian movie. You can be entertained by it, but you definitely do not want to take anything from the movie as the standard. The fact that it was based on a story in the bible shows that my tendency to be very aggressive with this review was not uncalled for, as if the story is from the bible then it should tell it from the perspective of the bible and not from what is happening in the world today. There needs to be clear segregation between what is true, and the way someone sees life.

Have you seen the movie? Do you agree or disagree with this review and why? Let me know in the comments.

See you in the next review!